NAME
perl5i - Bend Perl 5 so it fits how it works in our imaginations
SYNOPSIS
use perl5i;
or
$ perl5i your_script.pl
DESCRIPTION
THIS MODULE'S INTERFACE IS UNSTABLE! It's still a playground. Features
may be added, changed and removed without notice. `use perl5i' may not
even work in the future. See
http://github.com/schwern/perl5i/issues/issue/69 and
http://github.com/schwern/perl5i/issues/issue/60 for details. You have
been warned.
Perl 5 has a lot of warts. There's a lot of individual modules and
techniques out there to fix those warts. perl5i aims to pull the best of
them together into one module so you can turn them on all at once.
This includes adding features, changing existing core functions and
changing defaults. It will likely not be 100% backwards compatible with
Perl 5, so perl5i will try to have a lexical effect.
Please add to this imaginary world and help make it real, either by
telling me what Perl looks like in your imagination
(http://github.com/schwern/perl5i/issues or make a fork (forking on
github is like a branch you control) and implement it yourself.
What it does
perl5i enables each of these modules and adds/changes these functions.
We'll provide a brief description here, but you should look at each of
their documentation for full details.
alias()
alias( $name => $reference );
alias( $package, $name => $reference );
alias( @identifiers => $reference );
Assigns a $refrence a $name. For example...
alias foo => sub { 42 };
print foo(); # prints 42
It will also work on hash, array and scalar refs.
our %stuff;
alias stuff => \%some_other_hash;
Multiple @identifiers will be joined with '::' and used as the fully
qualified name for the alias.
my $class = "Some::Class";
my $name = "foo";
alias $class, $name => sub { 99 };
print Some::Class->foo; # prints 99
If the $name has no "::" in it, the current caller will be prepended.
This is basically a nicer way to say:
no strict 'refs';
*{$package . '::'. $name} = $reference;
center()
my $centered_string = $string->center($length);
my $centered_string = $string->center($length, $character);
Centers $string between $character. $centered_string will be of length
$length.
`<$character'> defaults to " ".
say "Hello"->center(10); # " Hello ";
say "Hello"->center(10, '-'); # "---Hello--";
`
will never truncate `<$string'>. If $length is less than
`<$string-'length>> it will just return `<$string'>.
say "Hello"->center(4); # "Hello";
wrap()
my $wrapped = $string->wrap( width => $cols, separator => $sep );
Wraps $string to width $cols, breaking lines at word boundries using
separator $sep.
If no width is given, $cols defaults to 76. Default line separator is
the newline character "\n".
See Text::Wrap for details.
ltrim()
my $string = ' testme'->ltrim; # 'testme'
Trim leading whitespace (left).
rtrim()
my $string = 'testme '->rtrim; #'testme'
Trim trailing whitespace (right).
trim()
my $string = ' testme '->trim; #'testme'
Trim both leading and trailing whitespace.
title_case()
my $name = 'joe smith'->title_case; #Joe Smith
Will uppercase every word character that follows a wordbreak character.
die()
`die' now always returns an exit code of 255 instead of trying to use
`$!' or `$?' which makes the exit code unpredictable. If you want to
exit with a message and a special exit code, use `warn' then `exit'.
English
English gives English names to the punctuation variables like `<$@'> is
also `<$EVAL_ERROR'>. See perlvar for details.
It does not load the regex variables which effect performance.
`<$PREMATCH'>, `<$MATCH'>, and ` will not exist. See `
in perlre for a better alternative.
Modern::Perl
Turns on strict and warnings, enables all the 5.10 features like
`given/when', `say' and `state', and enables C3 method resolution order.
CLASS
Provides `CLASS' and `$CLASS' alternatives to `__PACKAGE__'.
File::chdir
File::chdir gives you `$CWD' representing the current working directory
and its assignable to `. You can also localize it to safely
chdir inside a scope.
File::stat
File::stat causes `stat' to return objects rather than long arrays which
you never remember which bit is which.
DateTime
`time', `localtime' and `gmtime' are replaced with DateTime objects.
They will all act like the core functions.
# Sat Jan 10 13:37:04 2004
say scalar gmtime(2**30);
# 2004
say gmtime(2**30)->year;
# 2009 (when this was written)
say time->year;
Time::y2038
gmtime() and localtime() will now safely work with dates beyond the year
2038 and before 1901 (the exact range is not defined, but its well into
a couple million years in either direction).
Module::Load
Module::Load adds `load' which will load a module from a scalar without
requiring you to do funny things like `eval require $module'.
IO::Handle
Turns filehandles into objects so you can call methods on them. The
biggest one is `autoflush' rather than mucking around with `$|' and
`select'.
$fh->autoflush(1);
autodie
autodie causes system and file calls which can fail (`open', `system'
and `chdir', for example) to die when they fail. This means you don't
have to put `or die' at the end of every system call, but you do have to
wrap it in an `eval' block if you want to trap the failure.
autodie's default error messages are pretty smart.
All of autodie will be turned on.
autobox
autobox allows methods to be defined for and called on most unblessed
variables.
autobox::Core
autobox::Core wraps a lot of Perl's built in functions so they can be
called as methods on unblessed variables. `@a->pop' for example.
autobox::List::Util
autobox::List::Util wraps the functions from List::Util (first, max,
maxstr, min, minstr, shuffle, reduce, and sum) so they can be called on
arrays and arrayrefs.
autobox::dump
autobox::dump defines a `perl' method that returns Data::Dumper style
serialization of the results of the expression.
autovivification
autovivification fixes the bug/feature where this:
$hash = {};
$hash->{key1}{key2};
Results in `<$hash-'{key1}>> coming into existance. That will no longer
happen.
Want
Want generalizes the mechanism of the wantarray function, allowing a
function to determine the context it's being called in. Want
distinguishes not just scalar v. array context, but void, lvalue,
rvalue, boolean, reference context and more. See perldoc Want.
BUGS
Some parts are not lexical.
See http://github.com/schwern/perl5i/issues/labels/bug for a complete
list.
Please report bugs at http://github.com/schwern/perl5i/issues/.
VERSIONING
perl5i follows the Semantic Versioning policy, http://semver.org. In
short...
Versions will be of the form X.Y.Z.
0.Y.Z may change anything at any time.
Incrementing X (ie. 1.2.3 -> 2.0.0) indicates a backwards incompatible
change.
Incrementing Y (ie. 1.2.3 -> 1.3.0) indicates a new feature.
Incrementing Z (ie. 1.2.3 -> 1.2.4) indicates a bug fix or other
internal change.
NOTES
Inspired by chromatic's Modern::Perl and in particular
http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2009/04/ugly-perl-a-lesson-in-the-impo
rtance-of-language-design.html.
I totally didn't come up with the "Perl 5 + i" joke. I think it was
Damian Conway.
THANKS
Thanks to our contributors: Chas Owens, Darian Patrick, rjbs, chromatic,
Ben Hengst and anyone else I've forgotten.
Thanks to Flavian and Matt Trout for their signature and Devel::Declare
work.
Thanks to all the CPAN authors upon whom this builds.
LICENSE
Copyright 2009-2010, Michael G Schwern
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html
SEE ALSO
Repository: http://github.com/schwern/perl5i/tree/master Issues/Bugs:
http://github.com/schwern/perl5i/issues IRC: irc.perl.org on the #perl5i
channel
Modern::Perl